


If Only

by AugustStories



Series: Personal Writing Challenge October 2019 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Clint Barton, Background Character Death, Bucky Barnes & Clint Barton Friendship, Disregarding anything that came after, Grief/Mourning, Losing a Teammate, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), not any Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 19:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20894936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustStories/pseuds/AugustStories
Summary: You couldn't save everyone. Sometimes you lost people.And sometimes those people were your teammates.Clint Barton finds himself returning to the Avengers base after a disaster struck on a mission.





	If Only

**Author's Note:**

> I get obsessively protective over my OCs, so be nice to him.
> 
> To support my friend with her inktober challenge, I made myself a writing challenge so she wouldn't be handling prompt works on a daily basis alone. I will be posting all works that aren't based on original writing where you guys wouldn't understand the context, this is day four.

Once an Avenger, always an Avenger.

You didn't stop being a superhero just because you retired to spend more time with your family before the next big bad of the season ended your life with too many regrets on the list. Clint Barton had already experienced what it meant to lose his family, to lose everything and he wasn't going to let it happen a second time.

So he retired.

He packed his things together and returned home to Iowa, not to forget what had happened but to live in the memory of those who had sacrificed themselves so he could get to experience this second chance with his wife and kids.

But sometimes, duty called and help was needed.

Especially when tragedy struck.

Out of the Original Six only Bruce and Clint were left, and though the new Avengers team was great and powerful and with Rhodey, Sam and Bucky had people with lots of experiences themselves, sometimes they turned towards the oldies with questions, too. It was roughly two years after Tony's death that it found Clint stepping out of his car at the front entrance to the Avengers Facilities where a tired Bucky pushed himself off the pillar he had been leaning against. Sitting cross-legged down on the ground Parker didn't get up but watched Clint with held back curiosity. 

"I'm glad you could make it," Bucky greeted him with a firm handshake and eyes that looked like falling shut any second. "Really strung tight at the moment."

"Yeah, I can see that," Clint deadpanned and pushed Bucky towards the front door, reaching down to pull Parker to his feet, "tell me again what happened and then you're taking a damn nap."

Bucky briefed him again on the situation as they walked into the holy walls of the facility, a business as usual mission had turned horribly catasstrophic when a factory worker had – in panic and fear – not turned off the heat for the smelting ovens but turned it to full capacity. The following explosion had unfortunately taken lives before Wanda had gotten the situation under control, it had all happened so quickly and so suddenly, and of course no one was really to blame. Humans made mistakes, especially when scared. 

Among the dead had been two members of the Avenger's tactical support team, the one that nobody called Strike even though it truly was just that. Two agents had been caught in the explosion, one of whom had died just out of reach of her partner, an event that could truly mess someone up.

Now, no one on the team was a stranger to losing someone, especially also not losing someone just out of reach. But with Rhodey and Sam still in Wisconsin to deal with the political nightmare that had followed the disaster, those most equipped to help people move past the paralysing pain were unavailable. Bucky was not someone who liked talking to strangers and kept the support team at a distance anyway, he was also the reason on why nobody called them Strike, so him talking to an agent who had lost his partner was not an option, though Bucky was obviously beating himself up over it.

Clint made a note to talk to him as well before he left as he thanked Bucky for the report and then shushed him off to find his bed, adding a clear Dad tone to his voice when Bucky still hesitated. 

"Go and play some video games, Parker," he turned to the kid who had followed them like a duckling, he had never interacted much with Peter Parker, he had been Tony's protege and then the snap had gotten him – and part of Clint also knew that seeing Parker grow beyond himself as an Avenger made him think of the same chance that had been taken from Pietro. Nowadays the kid wasn't a kid anymore but a man of legal age, went to college when the world wasn't calling for superheroes, and according to the latest phonecalls he had had with Bucky, Clint knew that he was the current target for Parker's shadowing. "Just try to get your head free, you know, it's no use to obsess on it."

"I know," Parker told him and then headed off, not in the direction of the living quarters but the labs, and it was of no surprise. None of them was looking for the next Tony Stark in him but sometimes he showed signs of why Tony must have been so fond of him so quickly. Clint sighed and threw in one small detour before finding Agent Tommy Gabel. He knocked on the half open door of Wanda's room and smiled when she turned around with eyes that lit up.

"Hey," he greeted her with a warm hug and then framed her face in both his hands, looking her over, "you don't look as tired as I had feared."

"I'm good, Bucky is very good in getting people to do what he is keeping himself from," Wanda mentioned and Clint kissed the top of her head.

"That's why I sent him to bed now. Wanna grab some dinner later and catch up with your old man?" 

Wanda send him away with a roll of her eyes and a promise to be ready by seven.

\--

Tommy Gabel had been recruited to Shield's Strike division when Clint had also still just been that, a Strike agent, even if one with special favors and special missions. If he wasn't mistaken the kid had been only nineteen back then, recruited by one of Rumlow's inferior team captains out of a military special ops teams. 

He had been a skinny wide eyed guy whom Clint had felt a little sorry for in the ragtag group of alpha powerhouses and sharp teethed ninjas that Rumlow had preferred among his men and women. And then he had felt even more sorry for him when after the disaster of DC and Shield's downfall, Tommy had turned out to be one of only two Strike agents who had a) survived that day and b) turned out to not be Hydra. Twenty two years old and betrayed by family.

There had been absolutely no question over not welcoming Tommy into Steve's and Tony's new institution after Ultron, at which point Tommy had had been recovered from the many injuries he had sustained in DC from protecting innocent data analysts from the cruelty of his own teammates.

Now, six years later, Tommy wasn't even thirty yet – the age that Strike had back in the day called the threshold to retirement, no one got old in that job – but by far the one with the most experience in the Avenger's support tac team. And still he wasn't Commander, had passed over the job in favor of his partner, a woman two years his Senior. Rachel Leto and him had worked well together.

Until the day that fate decided that five meters between them would decide between life and death.

\--

He found Tommy where some of the other still grieving tactical agents had pointed him, sitting quietly in a window alcove of the gym that he and his fellow agents shared with the Avengers. Clint grimaced at a distance for a moment, regardless of the fact that he had lived, five meters hadn't meant he hadn't gotten injured. There were bandages and bandaids literally almost anywhere and as much as Clint understood from Bucky's sometimes a little too blunt reporting, the bandaged hands hadn't come from the explosion itself.

Tommy had tried patting out Rachel's burning body long after she had already been dead, because at least that little mercy had been given to her, the explosion and the fireball had thrown her and she had been dead upon impact, no long suffering. Clint approached with silent but still noticeable steps and then sat down next to Tommy, green eyes flickered over to him for a moment but then turned to look back down at the forest around the base.

"Agent Barton," Tommy greeted him and Clint's lips flickered up, just like he did nowadays whenever someone made that mistake.

"Not an agent anymore, Agent Gabel, it's just plain old Clint Barton now." He pointed out and it got him the look of focused green eyes, Tommy looked like he hadn't been sleeping much but that wasn't a surprise. "You know, there is no general remedy for it, and everyone feels different but talking usually helps. And I will understand, I promise. I know where your head is at right now."

"If only I'd just gone over when she called." Tommy began subdued, by the raspy sound of his voice it was obvious that he was still suffering under the lasting effects of too much smoke inhalation, too. "Right before... it happened, Rachel called me over to check something out together. I told her to wait a moment, I wasn't sure if our backs were really clear. If I had gone to her, we might have walked off and been out of the blast radius far enough to only get hurt."

"Or you'd both be dead now. Agent..."

"Tommy," he got corrected, "please, just... just Tommy."

"Tommy then, you lose people in this line of work. And it's never okay, it's never fair and certainly never worth it. But drowning in what ifs can never be the solution." Clint remarked and it was the truth, as much as he had been hurting after he had lost people, especially in the last year, he had never gotten caught up in what if guilt. Not even after Natasha. Losing Natasha wasn't what he was thinking about right now though, Natasha had made a choice to let go, she had known what was coming, Rachel had been caught unawares. "Rachel knew there were risks included in her job, that something could happen anytime she went out. She knew that, accepted it."

"Still, I can't believe that after everything she had achieved already, she gets taken out like this. It happened so quickly. We looked at each other when that boom of the explosion sounded, and then... I was flying, then I hit the ground and it hurt. Next thing I saw was her," Tommy choked up and briefly closed his eyes, Clint just waited him out, "I knew she was dead, right away, and still... Contrary to a lot of us guys she still had family, family who cared, I couldn't let them get an unrecognisable body," he lifted his bandaged hands, drily chuckling. "Even if it hurts like a bitch now. I just needed to do something."

And Clint knew how that felt like.

"And you did good. But now you need to make sure that you won't burn yourself out. We, us, the people who are standing still, the survivors, it's in our hands to keep their memory alive." Clint said it with conviction because there wasn't a day where he didn't know that he wouldn't be alive on said day if it wasn't for the decisons that Phil, Pietro and Natasha had made at each point in time. "Rachel died but you're still here. And I'm quite sure she would want you to keep fighting, to keep fighting the good fight."

"I'm trying," Tommy insisted, the haze vanishing from his eyes, determination taking its place, "believe me I am. I'm not going to five up, she would come back and haunt me if I did. It's just hard right now, I can't go anywhere or do anything without being fully aware of what happened," and he showed his hands to Clint. "It's DC all over again. Only this time, there is a whole group of people looking at me. I was Rachel's second, they're looking at me like there is anything I could say to make them feel better."

"Are you sure there isn't? Sometimes people really just want to hear that it's okay to grieve, that it's okay to hurt. And sometimes all they need to know is that they are not alone."

"Is that why Barnes sent for you?" Tommy surprised him with his question and Clint blinked at him, "because I know he did, Barton. Not that I'm not grateful for it. I just... I like honesty."

"He did sent for me. Bucky means well," Clint explained and sent a look up in the direction of the Avengers' private rooms, "but with his past, he... he prefers to keep his distance from you guys still. But he cares, he does. And if you want honesty, why don't we take a walk, maybe grab a snack from the cafeteria, there are some things I wanna tell you."

\--

Threen months later, Bucky mentioned on a visit to the farm that Tommy took the Commander spot and had been helping the whole tac team move on from their losses.

And Clint liked his new role, too.


End file.
